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POLITICO Roundtable: Boston bombing, gun bill blocking

“Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious,” she wrote. “I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children safe.”

Giffords was wounded, nearly fatally, in January 2011 in a gunman’s attack in Tucson, Ariz., that claimed the lives of six people. After a difficult recovery that led her to resign her House seat, she and her husband, Mark Kelly, became vocal advocates for gun control legislation.

“I am asking,” she said, “every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. I am asking for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them: You’ve lost my vote.”

Along with family members of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, she was present in the Rose Garden after the Senate vote failed as President Barack Obama called it “a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

Obama cited her in his remarks.

“Their legislation showed respect for gun owners, and it showed respect for the victims of gun violence,” the president said. “And Gabby Giffords, by the way, is both — she’s a gun owner and a victim of gun violence. She is a Westerner and a moderate. And she supports these background checks.”